Make our Garden Grow (my anthem for the lockdown)

You've been a fool and so have I
But come and be my wife
And let us try before we die
To make some sense of life

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

I thought the world was sugar cake
For so our master said
But now I'll teach my hands to bake
Our loaf of daily bread

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found
The sweetest flowers
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground

We're neither pure nor wise nor good
We'll do the best we know
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow
And make our garden grow

To My Old Brown Earth

Primal Pete Seeger. His last song. I just watched, for the second time, the PBS bio of Seeger, and could not help but shudder at how much the world has changed in those few years. How dark  it seems now, and how out of place this man's eternal optimism, inextinguishable hope. The stakes are far higher than ever before, and we can't just fix it with a change of ideology. Even if we were to come to complete world reconciliation, it would not stop that which we have set in terrible, heedless motion.  And I don't want to pass that hopelessness on to my grandkids, so I won't. But I will listen to this, and sink into it, and feel some peace for a while. Self-recrimination and hopelessness is no way to live.

My Lord, What a Morning!

Music from my old church choir, circa 2001: two mikes, ten singers (all untrained), led by a jazz musician who had never directed a choir before, and without a penny for good sound equipment. We recorded these songs a cappella, in somebody's living room, interrupted by doorbells, phones ringing and dogs barking, not to mention the occasional giggle fit. The result wasn't perfect, but I think we sound pretty darned good for a group which started out with very limited skills. The songs Bill Prouten arranged and composed sound strange, because most of them are dissonant, with very tight chords, and do unexpected things (listen to the end of Coventry Carol!). Often he'd come to choir practice with a sheaf of handwritten music, the ink still fresh on it like something out of Amadeus, and we'd work all evening trying to master it. He made us better singers and better musicians than we knew how to be, or ever thought we could be. Bill Prouten was a major influence in my life for five years, and what he left me with is permanent. It's only now I can bear to listen to this, and why, I do not know! My dub onto YouTube added an extra problematic level of sound reproduction due to the crappyness of my sound equipment, but it's better than not having the songs at all. I chose the cover because from the back, that might be Bill himself.